Space Invaders Quilt - Progress!

Hello Again, 

I have finally made some more progress on the Space Invaders quilt.  All that cutting of black fabric took forever!  I was really excited to move on and make some progress, so honestly I still have a whole bunch of cutting to do on the background. 

I have a small table, so I use a sheet on the ground to lay out the pieces.  I laid out the first few rows (there's a mistake here, but I fixed it).

Then I divided them up into pairs and pieced those together.  There were once pictures of those, but I had a memory card debacle and lost all the photos of the piecing process.  I had these very pretty chains of pieces, which I got all out of order when I cut them apart. Silly of me, huh?

I then had this mess to put back in order:

It wasn't hard, just a little annoying to sit down and figure out what should go where (annoying only because I had already done this part).  

See that missing top corner piece?  Casey is not a good quilting helper.  While I was sewing, he made off with one of the pieces and happily pulled out the seam for fun. (Weird dog.)

I was very please with myself about putting these all in order, so I went to grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen and Casey decided to help again.

He was very confused by my walking back in going "No, no no!!" and then thought he wasn't allowed to chew on his bone.  We had a minor crisis.  Note to self: make sure never to leave the room with quilt squares on the floor! (And poor Casey.)

Up next - a quick interim project I did one evening.

Till next time, 

A

Excel Quilt Planning

Hello Again, 

So several of my friends have asked me to give more explanation on my use of Microsoft Excel to plan my quilting and cross stitch patterns.  I'm not sure how much information I have to give you, but I'll be as useful as I can.  Feel free to ask for clarification in the comments too.

Basically, Excel is wonderful for anything that is based on squares - perfect for the kind of block designs of my video game quilts or the quotes I do in cross stitch.  I learned to design my own cross stitch patterns from my wonderful Mother when I realized at about 15 that most patterns are way, way too cute for my taste.  (And yes, Subversive Cross Stitch is one of my favorite things.)  Back then, however, I spent hours taping together pieces of graph paper and would get really frustrated really quickly.  I am not patient enough for that! 

So being the giant geek that I am, I was working on data in Excel one day and suddenly realized it would be perfect.  The first pattern I did was this one:

And yes, that border was evil to do and to put in Excel.  I actually copied it off a costume a friend had made that just sat on my desk while I painstakingly put it into the cell borders.  Obviously, each cell is a block on your fabric or an X if you're making a transfer pattern.

The first step for this is making all the cells a uniform size.  If you click that empty square in the top right corner of your sheet (or press CTR-A on the keyboard), you highlight the entire sheet.  Either drag your cells so they are the same size or right click and go to properties and set them to be the same size.

For cross stitch, I use two methods:
1) For full stitches, I just shade the entire square - the button that looks like a paint bucket. (Half and quarter stitches don't work nicely in Excel - I usually put in an X in the color the half stitch will be and try very hard to remember what I'm doing when I go to stitch the pattern.)

2) For back stitch, I use the "draw border" function and click on the edge of the cell where I want the line to be.  (Click on on the little arrow next to the "Borders" button -> "Draw Border")

3) For something like a motif or a border, once you have the initial horizontal or vertical iteration done, you can copy and paste it in to make life faster.  So much better than drawing it over and over!! 

Moving on to Quilts
Creating block quilt patterns is not much different, though I do a few different things to make life easier while I design the pattern.  Do the same first step, so the squares are the same size.  In my case, I make them 10 pixels wide, because it's easy - they can really be any size. 

1) Decide the size of your quilt and figure out how many inches that will be.  For this method, each cell on the spreadsheet will represent one inch.  

2) Leaving a few blank rows above and to the left, highlight the correct number of cells across and down. You can do this in landscape or portrait direction - it doesn't matter for the program - whichever is easier for you to work with.  (In recent versions of Excel, when you highlight many rows and columns, it will tell you next to the cursor how many you have highlighted.)

3) Click the little button next to the "Borders" button and select "Outside Borders".  I will sometimes also go to the "Line Style" option at the bottom of the menu and make the border really thick, so it's easy to see no matter what colors I'm working with.

4) This lets you mess with the size of your squares as well as your layout, so you can try your design in any size you like.  To insert the lines that represent the edge of your blocks, you can either use Draw Borders again or highlight 3 squares for 3" blocks and hit Outside Borders again.  Play around with it to see what method you like! 

You should have a grid that looks like this if you did 3" squares. (In may case, I put a 1" border around the edge just because - it eventually turned into a 3" border in the final design stages.)

5) Now, you can just highlight the cells inside those squares and use the fill button to make them any color you want.  If you need to undo your work, just select all and hit "No Fill" on that menu with the little paint bucket.  

The initial plan for the Space Invaders Quilt looked like this before I made it pretty:

There was really never any question that the background was going to be black for this one, so I eventually filled it in and made it pretty. 

Hope that is a better explanation.  If it's not clear, leave a comment and I will do another post or respond to your questions.

Using Excel for quilt planning and cross stitch design has been a huge help to me.  I hope it is as much fun for you!

Till next time, 
A

Quilt Progress

Hello again,

Sorry it's been so long!  Everything has been a little nuts and blogging was the thing that got cut to make life calmer.

I did finally find black fabric that will work for the space invaders quilt - hooray! So the color scheme will be:

 

 

See? That's going to be perfect! 

 

I also cut the squares of the blue fabric and then had way too much fun just playing with all the squares on the black background:

 



I have begun to think this is going to look amazing when it's done.  And given how frustrated I was getting trying to find really black quilting cotton, I think I get a few minutes of playing with it to make myself happy.

So - progress!!

Someday this might actually become a real quilt. :)

Till next time,
A

Project Planning & Goals

Hello again,

I realized the other day that I am working on projects as I remember I'm doing them and I think that means I need to do a little goal setting.  It may be that some of these don't happen, but these are my somewhat ambitious goals for this blog for the next few months.

#1) Finish E's Space Invaders quilt (and, of course, show you the whole process)

#2) Finish the clothes quilt for my bed (this one is the one that might get bumped)

#3) Buy my first pattern and make myself something I can actually wear.  I'm short on work clothes, so I think this will probably be something totally boring and practical. (Though super exciting for me if I succeed!)

#4) Find a pattern I like and make my first pencil skirt.  Then make a whole bunch more. (Remember that thing about needing work clothes?)

#5) Do something about the masses of too-big T-shirts in my life.  I have a whole drawer of these that I want to try to fix or alter or turn into something else.

#6) Make Casey a dog bed as pretty as he is.  It's going to be in my living room.  I would like it not to be ugly!  My puppy is so pretty - he should have a dog bed that does him justice.

I think those are pretty adequate goals for the next 3 months.  I suspect that quilting those two quilts will be the thing that breaks me. 

We'll see how that goes!  I have ideas and I'm scheming at least.  I'm always happy when I'm scheming! :)

Till next time,
A

Space Invaders Quilt: Cutting Endlessly

Hello again,

Well, I have finally started cutting squares for the Space Invaders Quilt!  I was having some difficulty getting even strips to do mass cutting, so I took my mother's suggestion and stopped trying to be efficient.  "Accuracy over efficiency, dear." was the comment, I believe!

I pulled out my materials and started with purple, since it was on top.



As you can see, I finally cleaned my table to make this easier!

Once I started cutting, I'm pretty sure I cut for about 4 hours straight.  I needed a feeling of accomplishment.  And I most definitely got it!  I discovered that once I cut a straight line on the bottom, I could just line up the template and only cut two sides of it to have a square.  Sometimes I messed up and there was more cutting involved, but at least I'm confident my squares are all 3.5" and will not do anything odd when I go to piece them together.

A very nice commenter told me about strip piecing (Thank StephC!) and I think for the next quilt I will definitley use that.  I'm feeling a little uncertain about getting the strips right on this quilt.  I'm hoping I get the hang of cutting nice, straight strips soon, because that would be really useful for my next quilt!



I cut 40 squares in a few hours, which was way faster than I expected and then I had to stand back and admire my handiwork....

And.... Then I cleaned my house, because my arm hurt. :P

When I stopped avoiding finishing my task, I came back and cut another 40 squares.  Then, shockingly, I was done!  I'm still a little amazed that I cut 80 squares in a day!

I also realized that somehow, my math on how much fabric I would need was off by about a factor of 5.  I have 2 yards of this fabric and I used less than half a yard.  It's a pretty purple though, so I will just use it in something in future!

Hooray for having a fabric stash!

Till next time (when I get to cut 80 blue squares and about 100 black sqaures.),
A

Update: After looking at my pattern again, I realized that I am very silly and cut way more squares than was necessary.  Anyone have another child who should get one of these? I'm pretty sure I doubled all the numbers!

Space Indavers Quilt: Fabric

Hello again,

Since the plans for the quilt are now complete, it is time to talk fabric. I have no real idea what I'm doing, so I decided to go with all quilting cotton of the same type. I was worried that they would match up strangely or wear differently over time otherwise. I needed solid colors, which surprisingly hard to find in quilting cotton in the right colors. I also need black, which is turning out to be a trial - but more on that later!

I went online with a general idea of the colors I needed and found fabric.com, which had Kona Quilting Cotton in a pretty wide range of colors. I ordered the three that I thought would work best and they finally came! (Who knew getting fabric in the mail would make me giddy!)

So I got these three:

Since, as always, these were taken at night with a flash, the colors are a tiny bit off.  That one on the end that looks black?  Yeah, it's not black - it's a very dark brown.  Now, it's a pretty color and all, but it is not going to work for this quilt.  Space Invaders absolutely must have a really dark, black background!  I like the color, so I'll keep it anyway and use it in something else someday - an excuse for more sewing. :)

I knew I had to pre-shrink fabric, but I had no idea what I was doing, so I found this awesome post on Gertie's Blog for Better Sewing. I just threw mine in the washer with some dark sheets and dried like I usually do. 


Only thing I forgot? Those instructions on serging or zigzagging the edge? Those are a good idea!  My edges look like this in the good spots:

Not a big deal, but it mean that I had a ton of clipping frayed threads to do!  Yes, yes I do now have a million purple and blue threads all over my house...  And a long-haired black dog. Who is (of course) now finding every loose thread and getting it tangled in his hair.  But hey, he loves being brushed, so it's his latest excuse to get groomed every night!

It took forever to iron all of these and I learned a couple of things:
1) My little tiny ironing board is not going to work for quilting.  I need to buy a full-sized one.

2) The fact that my iron has no auto-shutoff makes me nervous and is annoying cause I keep having to unplug it.

3) Steam. Steam is really important.  Why didn't I know this? Apparently, I'm just kind of a slob who never irons things. (Sorry Mom!) I had to iron everything twice, because this first time did not take without steam!

4) When I put my iron down, it hisses out a little cloud of steam. This should NOT be pointed at my own arm, my dog, my wall, or my table. Obvious?  Why yes, yes it kind of is. Now.
So, 4 hours later, I have fabric ready for cutting! And a sore arm from ironing for hours.
Next up: Finding truly black fabric and cutting quilt squares, both of which may take awhile. But I'm having so much fun, I really don't care.

Till next time,  
A

Space Invaders Quilt: Planning

Hello again!

It looks like I might actually be able to post often enough to make this blog a thing for me.  I'm not sure I'm terribly worried if anyone other than my Mom and Grandma read it, since really I started putting crafts up here so they could see them.  Perhaps someday it will entertain someone else too!

As I said in my last post, the real purpose of getting my sewing machine was to try to make a baby quilt for my friend E. We chatted about designs that she would love and things I thought I would be able to do with my limited machine sewing experience.  We are both complete geeks and love old video games, as does her husband.  I thought and thought and hunted around through the crafty blogs and I just wasn't seeing quite what I wanted.

Then I had a brain flash: Space Invaders!  Eight bit games are totally easy to make into quilts because they are already just blocks.  And Space Invaders is the ultimate original geek game.  I talked to E. and she loved the idea as much as I did.  She said her husband even did a little happy dance when she told what I wanted to do.

I should probably have been more intimidated by designing my own pattern, but it doesn't seem that different from designing cross stitch patterns, which I do all the time.  I spent a ton of time sketching out characters on graph paper and then remembered that I have the magic power of technology.

Excel is awesome for doing cross stitch patterns, so why not quilts too?  I can make that work!  I just select all and set each column and row to 20 pixels, so I have totally perfect, even squares to work with.  I redid the characters in there and it was all much easier to plan! It took quite awhile to choose which characters I wanted to use.  There are actually four characters, but I could not figure out how to fit all of them on a baby quilt without having to use 1" or 2" squares and that sounded like a lot of really small sewing!

It took awhile, but I decided these two were the cutest:

I spent days playing with different ideas and arrangements and sizes.  I thought about doing smaller characters and laying them out like the game itself, but I realized it would a) take for ever and b) be likely beyond my skill set.

After days of playing around, I decided on doing two large characters and making the quilt slightly larger than a normal crib quilt.  In the end, I ended up with this fantastic design that I am completely excited to make.

With the grid of where the squares will be:

I pulled out the grid, so I could see what it would look like and be sure I was really happy with it.  I have no idea how I'm going to quilt this so that it still looks like Space Invaders, but I will find a way! 

Now - to get the many, many squares cut and measured, so I can get moving before E's daughter makes it to 6 months!

Wish me luck.
A